Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/165

 because nowhere else are there so many Jews in a compact mass, and in the second place because of the marked inadequacy of Russian administrative methods as they are brought to bear on the complex necessities of the case. These are the two elements which make the Jewish problem in Russia so acute and perplexing. On the one hand you have the cruel and intolerable oppression of the Jews. You have the perpetual humiliation and irritation of the Jews in the small towns, who have no room for expansion, who live poor and miserable lives; you have the long long tale of their bitter suffering, and at the same time you have such facts as the growing power of the Jewish element in finance in Petrograd and Moscow, in banking, and commerce, and industry, and the very powerful influence of the Jews in the intellectual life of the Russians. You have these two sides, and both these sides must be clearly borne in mind. But the interesting thing in Russia is that the very intensity of Jewish suffering in Russia stimulates the efforts of the Jews, and of those who understand who the Jews are and what they are, to find a real solution. These efforts go in various directions. On the one hand there is a constant fight to secure elementary rights of existence in Russia on a level with the other inhabitants of the great plain, and at the same time there is an effort, which is now largely crowned with success, to bring about a new Jewish national revival, and the inner life of the Jews in Russia is extremely interesting because of this conflict of aims and ambitions, and because in the long run this movement is illumined by a spiritual light. I believe that after the war, after the great struggle not